Narrative Quotes - Page 32

• Written history may, in the course of its narrative, use some of the laws established by the various sciences, but its own task remains that of relating the essential sequence of historical action and, qua history, to tell what happened, not why.

  Lloyd deMause

  Law, Historical, Essentials

  Lloyd DeMause (1975). “The New Psychohistory”, New York : Psychohistory Press

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• The New Testament was not produced as a single work issued by an authoritative Church for the instruction of its members. The four Gospels were composed in different times and places over perhaps a third of a century, and for a time circulated separately among a number of other narratives of our Lord's life (of which the newly discovered fragment of an unknown gospel may have been one).

  Frederic G. Kenyon

  Numbers, Church, Different

  "The Story Of The Bible" by Frederic G. Kenyon. Ch. X, The Position Today, p. 133, 1949.

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• He managed to do this 'tour de force' of styles without ever breaking the narrative structure of the chapter he was writing. It is the most brilliant parody of writing styles that I have ever read.

  Frederick Lenz

  Writing, Narrative Structure, Style

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• The Da Vinci Code may well be the only novel ever written that begins with the word 'renowned'... I think what enabled the first word to tip me off that I was about to spend a number of hours in the company of one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature was this. Putting curriculum vitae details into complex modifiers on proper names or definite descriptions is what you do in journalistic stories about deaths; you just don't do it in describing an event in a narrative... Why did I keep reading? Because London Heathrow is a long way from San Francisco International.

  Geoffrey K. Pullum

  Book, Reading, Thinking

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• If a large number of people who are convinced alien abductions are real are hypnotising even larger numbers of others who suspect they might be, then it is likely there will be many alien abduction narratives flying around, as, indeed, there are. Of course, this is not proof they are not true, but it does provide a persuasive context for a simple psychosocial explanation. Hypnotism is a technique that triggers a mass storytelling project in which all the stories are linked.

  Bryan Appleyard

  Real, Simple, Numbers

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• The very admission of the need to harmonize is an admission that the burden of proof is on the narratives, not on those who doubt them. What harmonizing shows is that despite appearances, the texts still might be true.

  Robert M. Price

  Burden Of Proof, Religion, Doubt

  Robert M. Price (2008). “Beyond Born Again: Toward Evangelical Maturity”, p.75, Wildside Press LLC

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• If there be a mind that, not perceiving in the narratives we have compared the fingermarks of tradition, and hence the legendary character of these evangelical anecdotes, still leans to the historical interpretation, whether natural or supernatural; that mind must be alike ignorant of the true character both of legend and of history, of the natural and the supernatural.

  David Friedrich Strauss

  Character, Historical, Ignorant

  David Friedrich Strauss, George Eliot (1860). “The life of Jesus critically examined”, p.339

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• It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way around.... It is more rewarding, in any case, to assemble the facts first and, in the process of arranging them in narrative form, to discover a theory or a historical generalization emerging of its own accord.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Believe, Historical, Atheism

  Barbara W. Tuchman (2011). “Practicing History: Selected Essays”, p.34, Random House

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• Abstraction didn't have to be limited to a kind of rectilinear geometry or even a simple curve geometry. It could have a geometry that had a narrative impact. In other words, you could tell a story with the shapes. It wouldn't be a literal story, but the shapes and the interaction of the shapes and colors would give you a narrative sense. You could have a sense of an abstract piece flowing along and being part of an action or activity. That sort of turned me on.

  Frank Stella

  Simple, Impact, Curves

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• To know how to structure the joke perfectly so that the narrative information is given in the right tempo, in just the right dose - it sometimes takes quite a lot of work. It seems easy when you hear the joke.

  David Salle

  Information, Sometimes, Easy

  Interview with David Salle, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 9, 2013.

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• The immersive stories of This Is Paradise are a lithe blend of formal invention and traditional narrative pleasures. As such they reflect Kristiana Kahakauwila's intimate but expansive vision of a Hawai'i forged from the collisions of past and present, here and there. Her protagonists are as richly distinctive as the pidgin they speak, and yet each struggles profoundly with identity-that negotiation between ourselves and the world, which is at once Hawaiian, American, universally and compellingly human.

  Peter Ho Davies

  Struggle, Past, Vision

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• [Science fiction is] that class of prose narrative treating of a situation that could not arise in the world we know, but which is hypothesised on the basis of some innovation in science or technology, or pseudo-science or pseudo-technology, whether human or extra-terrestrial in origin. It is distinguished from pure fantasy by its need to achieve verisimilitude and win the 'willing suspension of disbelief' through scientific plausibility.

  Kingsley Amis

  Technology, Winning, Class

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• My dad's a Pentecostal minister, meaning that he's full of charisma. If he's telling a story about Noah's ark, you best know each tiger is going to be having their own little conversation and narrative.

  John Boyega

  Dad, Ark, Stories

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The narrative of so many fairy tales are timeless in so many different cultures, and they have been since the dawn of man. They represent escapism, but they all feature themes that have such poignancy in a modern world.

  Lily Cole

  Men, Dawn, Different

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Dialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks in curving towards the watcher on the shore.

  Edith Wharton

  Fiction, Moments, Wave

  Edith Wharton (2014). “The Writing of Fiction”, p.55, Simon and Schuster

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• I don't believe in doing thousands of cuts, then giving it to the editor to make the movie. 'Dump-truck directing' is my reference to that style of moviemaking. You have to know how to cut before you can shoot well. The lack of definition in movies today is appalling. Very few people know how to mount a narrative anymore. If a scene works in one cut, you don't need 10. Or it might need 10. Let's not make it 20.

  Gordon Willis

  Believe, Cutting, Editors

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• The camera creates a magical transformation. It's not enough to exist; we must chronicle that existence. ... Narrative- and image-making creatures like humans don't feel any experience is complete unless it's recorded.

  Erica Jong

  Photography, Cameras, Transformation

  Erica Jong (2007). “Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life”, p.176, Penguin

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• one of Mr. [Thomas] Hardy's ancestors must have married a weeping willow. There are pages and pages in his collected poems which are simply plain narratives in ballad form of how an unenjoyable time was had by all.

  Rebecca West

  Weeping Willows, Pages, Married

  Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.118, Open Road Media

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• What suggests to non-Evangelical scholars that the resurrection narratives contain legendary accounts? First there is a variety of apparent contradictions in the stories which in any ancient narrative would have to arouse the historian's suspicion.

  Robert M. Price

  Religion, Stories, Firsts

  Robert M. Price (2008). “Beyond Born Again: Toward Evangelical Maturity”, p.75, Wildside Press LLC

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• I've worked out of a series of no's. No to exquisite light, no to apparent compositions, no to the seduction of poses or narrative. And all these no's force me to the yes. I have a white background. I have the person I'm interested in and the thing that happens between us.

  Richard Avedon

  Light, White, Seduction

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• It's a little like packing for a trip. First you lay out everything that might possibly be useful, with no thought about the size of your suitcase. Then, look at your suitcase. In the case of narrative, there's a certain obligation to keep the pace up and have each section or subsection be doing something.

  George Saunders

  Size, Looks, Pace

  Interview with Andy Ward, www.slate.com. January 7, 2013.

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• I am not interested only in telling a story, but I want to tell it my way. I don't want my accent, my temperament, my narrative style to be compromised to fit into a mold of the Hollywood type.

  Haile Gerima

  Style, Mold, Hollywood

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• I've always thought that one of the things that the Internet and the gaming world permits as a narrative technique is to not tell the story from beginning to end - to tell stories sideways, to give alternative possibilities that the reader can, in a way, choose between.

  Salman Rushdie

  Giving, Technique, Alternatives

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Free-form games in which the player can make choices about what the game is going to be, become a kind of gaming equivalent of the narrative possibility.

  Salman Rushdie

  Player, Games, Choices

  Source: bigthink.com

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• I fell in love with poetry through storytelling, so my poetry tends to be fairly narrative. I like characters, I like having a beginning, middle, and ending, though not necessarily in that order.

  Sarah Kay

  Character, Order, Storytelling

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